S. Awan is a failed journalist, a student of history, a lover of music, film, culture, and an enthusiast of the the controversial and the weird.
Also a musician, and part-time freelance, involuntary human being. Also occasionally lives on the moon. Also is a ghost. And a cigarette butt that hasn't been put out properly; so, you know, there's still, like, smoke coming out of it and stuff...

The war in Yemen – and it’s accompanying humanitarian catastrophe – has been going on a very long time now; and it shows no signs of abating any time soon.

And about the seeming apathy of Western media and politicians and the hypocrisy in terms of how the Biblical-scaled suffering in Yemen is broadly ignored while geo-politically-motivated coverage of other crises elsewhere are amplified. They really don’t like us talking about Yemen – they would prefer we talked about Venezuela or Syria.

On the actual war side of it, which has often been nebulous and murky, it has become evident that – in addition to US and UK logistical support for Saudi Arabia’s campaign – Israel is also more involved in the Yemen situation than most people realise. (more…)

Alright, so I’ve neglected to touch on this subject for a very long time.

I did cover it in March 2015 when the catastrophe started (and sporadically since then), but I’ve generally neglected it. Not because I don’t care: but because I find this subject so upsetting, so dispiriting, that I can’t bring myself to look at it.

But… Yemen. How the hell is that situation still going on?

I mean, it’s a massacre, right? That’s been going on in plain sight for over three years at this point.

Where is the international community? What’s the UN doing? Where’s the emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the situation? (more…)

I noted a few days ago the similarities between the late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

We noted that the unsettling footage circulating on the Internet and some news channels of his death were eerily reminiscent of the brutal murder of Gaddafi in October 2011.

And we also noted that Saleh (pictured above with two other casualties of the Arab Spring, Gaddafi and Mubarak) had other similarities to Gaddafi in terms of his decades-long rule, his carefully nurtured relationships with the Yemeni tribes and factions that allowed him to keep order and stability in the country for so long, and how he – like Gaddafi – fell victim to the ‘Arab Spring’.

Something else Saleh had in common with Gaddafi had been a belief in the ideas of pan-Arabism and a particular admiration of President Nasser in Egypt, who, as it happens, was also a major inspiration for Gaddafi. (more…)

The murder of former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh by Houthi rebels will simply guarantee continued and intensified attacks by the Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing Yemen since March 2015.

By Sunday, Houthi fighters had taken control of most of the capital, Sanaa, with intense battles going on in the city.

Saudi airstrikes didn’t prvent the Houthi fighters from reaching former President Saleh’s own home on Monday. Shortly after this, the reports began to circulate that he had been murdered, with some versions of the story claiming he had been taken out of the vehicle he had attempted to flee in and summarily executed by Houthi fighers acting no better than Al-Qaeda fighters or jihadists. (more…)

You couldn’t really get a better – or more tragic – illustration than this of the continuity of agenda when it comes to US foreign policy and of how it doesn’t actually matter what administration happens to be in the White House.

It’s all about perspective, of course: but if you’re a child in Yemen, for example, it makes little difference to you whether you’re being murdered by US soldiers under a Donald Trump administration or by US soldiers under a Barack Obama or George W. Bush administration (or by Saudi airstrikes).

The striking story that illustrates this point came to my notice initially via the Free Thought Project, primarily citing Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept and the work of Jeremy Scahill: it involves two children from the same family, both having been murdered by American actions – one of them during the Obama administration and the other now in the Trump administration. (more…)

Opponents of US-led foreign interventions and wars may find themselves disappointed by the foreign policy paths the Trump-led White House ends up taking.

It hasn’t taken very long at all for the ill omens to appear. For all the talk of a new, inward-looking protectionism and a backing away from Neo-Con activity in the Middle East, suspicions build that the new administration may be all set to continue the Neo-Con agenda and soon commence hostile activity against Iran.

The accusations being leveled at Iran by President Trump and his Islamophobic National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (the “Islam is a cancer” guy) concerning alleged Iranian violations of the nuclear treaty are likely manufactured to try to mislead the American public into accepting military action against Iran.(more…)

I have decided – due to requests from several people – to stop writing negative things about Donald Trump or the Steve Bannon administration that has just come into the White House.

Even though I have serious misgivings about this new administration and its outlook (along with some more positive views on some specific ideas), I will – for a little while, at least – refrain from upsetting anyone any further or bursting any bubbles by asking questions or being too critical about the Trump White House.

Barring any particularly extraordinary event, this will be a Trump-free zone for a while. (more…)

The death, at the beginning of the year, of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, after a nine-and-a-half year reign and the accession to the throne of his half-brother, Salman bin Abdulaziz, seems to have marked no turning point in Saudi policy either at home or abroad.

With the change of rulers, things in fact seemed to have escalated to a worse state of affairs.

Not a day goes by anymore without the newspapers sensationalising something or another that Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The latest is the claim that Corbyn called the death of Osama bin Laden “a tragedy”. For one thing, you might have the mistaken impression from Social Media or from newspaper headlines that Mr Corbyn had said this in recent days; in fact, it’s something he said four years ago, at the time of Bin Laden’s alleged assassination in May 2011.

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